In a paper published in Nature Communications yesterday scientists from Samsung say they have developed a new silicon cathode material "coded with high-crystalline graphene". As deployed in its lithium-ion batteries the new cathodes produce cells "with twice as much capacity as ordinary lithium-ion batteries," reports the Korea Times. Lithium-ion batteries were first introduced in 1991 and have only gradually been improved since that time.

Son In-hyuk, a professional researcher at SAIT (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology) said "The research has dramatically improved the capacity of lithium-ion batteries by applying a new synthesis method of high-crystalline graphene to a high-capacity silicon cathode". In-hyuk continued to say that Samsung intends to improve the technology and deploy it in both the mobile device and electric vehicle markets.

Hard disk drive motor business divestment

As Samsung moves ahead with new and emerging technologies, in parallel it demonstrates that it is happy to prune away its old declining technology businesses. Earlier today Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co Ltd said that it will exit the hard disk drive motor business. Related business assets will be sold off while the division concentrates on core business like smartphone and camera components. It isn't certain who will buy up the redundant HDD motor assets.

I'm not confident that it's happening anytime soon. Graphene is the thing is the thing they want to replace silicon with too(I remember seeing projected figures like 1000ghz for graphene based tech) but its supposedly incredibly hard to mass produce.